


Standing Eight

by livenudebigfoot



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Boxing & Fisticuffs, Chronic Pain, Guilt, Impact Play, Kink Negotiation, M/M, POV Harold Finch, Past Abuse, Reluctant Sadist, Sexual Repression, Under-negotiated Kink, good giving game, or over-negotiated depending on how you look at it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:50:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livenudebigfoot/pseuds/livenudebigfoot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finch isn't much of a boxer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/gifts).



> Happy birthday tooooo yoooooooooooooou. Happy extremely late birthdaaaaaaaaay toooooooo yoooooooooou. Happy biiiiiiiirthdaaaaaaaaaaay dear Diiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeen. Thiiiiiiiiiiis toooooooooooook me like ten fucking weeks holy shit.
> 
> This is a sequel to Depth Charge. You don't have to read it to understand this fic, just know that Finch encouraged Fusco to try sounding and it was weird but fine, and now Finch feels indebted to him in a kink way.

When Finch touches him, he begins to stir. At first jerkily, in lazy twitches and suppressed grunts, but as Finch's cool, blue-veined hands warm up, he relaxes to smooth, languid, full-body stretches before curling against Finch's side.

This is, Finch knows by now, a little show put on for his benefit. Lionel was already awake, before Finch laid a hand on him. He's not exactly sure how he knows this - something about the rhythm of his breaths, a certain stiffness in the neck perhaps - but he's made enough of a study of Lionel that he knows it with certainty. The way he knows the time of day, the origins of bird calls.

It makes him nervous.

It shouldn't, because Lionel is patient and devoted in ways Finch never thought he could be, because right now Lionel is settling his head on Finch's shoulder, a warm, sloppy, early-morning smile on his face.

Finch leans into his own role and indulgently cradles the back of Lionel's head.

"Hey," Lionel croaks, voice all rough with disuse. The corner of his mouth jerks suddenly, turns his lazy smile sharp.

Finch's heart quavers.

There is a lot about Lionel that makes Finch nervous.

"Good morning." He feels Lionel's curls snarl around the tips of his fingers. "Restless night?"

Lionel's rough palm slides over Finch's stomach, square, firm pressure. "Nah," he says. "Just, uh, just up early. Thinking."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." He nudges his way into curve of Finch's neck and stays there, breathing evenly. "You know how you said..." he begins. Lionel clears his scratchy throat. "You said that sometime, we could try my thing."

"I did," Finch says.

"And I said I didn't have a thing."

"You said," Finch whispers against his ear, against his blind, nuzzling cheek, "that _I_ was your thing."

He feels Lionel's smile, the tightening of muscles, the drawing-back of lips. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, that is what I said. You remembered that?"

"I did." Finch always remembers these things. He treasures Lionel's small, raw admissions of fondness. He takes note of what precedes them and what follows. He'd make a spreadsheet if it wasn't such a sterile, cold approach to something that should be neither.

"You wanna...you wanna try something, sometime?"

"Of course I do."

Of course he does. Finch feels himself overtaken with a kind of internal wavering, one that manifests itself in shaking fingers and a wobbling heart. Because Finch has coaxed Lionel - bullied Lionel - into all sorts of games and sexual detours over the past year. And Lionel has asked for nothing. Lionel is, Finch suspects, a _good sport_. "Yeah, it's not really my thing," Finch imagines him saying. "But what the hell. I'm a good sport."

Finch doesn't want a good sport. He wants something equitable and mutually satisfying. He doesn't want to be demanding.

It's just that very often, he is.

"What would you like to try?" Finch asks against the top of Fusco's head.

Wrapped around him like he is, Finch can feel his hesitation, the creak and stutter of words stopped short. Cagily, Lionel begins, "Something like last night."

Hmmm. Last night.

He peers between their bodies at Lionel's chafed wrists, his hips still lightly scratched and creepingly pink. Finch enjoyed last night.

"Go on," he murmurs.

"Just. You know. That kinda thing." He huddles closer against Finch. "Doesn't have to be exactly like last night. Just that kind of thing, where you tie me up and hit me."

Finch doesn't know why it startles him to hear. He supposes that is what happened, in the barest, most workmanlike terms, but he's tried to be so careful, so watchful, so willing to hold back. He thought he was doing well. "I don't know if that's how I'd characterize it."

His broad shoulders jerk against Finch as he shrugs them. "Well, you get what I'm trying to say."

Finch isn't precisely sure that's true. He kisses Lionel's head, gives him a slap on his soft, heavy flank. "Like that?"

"For starters." Lionel rubs his cheek against Finch's. "On my face, though?"

"Really?"

"Yeah." Lionel leans back so he can look at Finch. His smile is unfinished, shy.

He's not hurt today. There's a faded yellow shadow of a bruise on his hairline, a fine, grainy scrape just above his knee. Otherwise, whole. Finch takes Lionel's face between his hands.

He lets his palm tap once, sharp, against Lionel's cheek.

Lionel lets out a stumbling, shocked rush of laughter.

"Good?" Finch asks.

"Sure," but he's still laughing. "Little harder?"

Finch gets the niggling sense that he's being made fun of.

"Come on," Lionel says, leaning into his palm. "Just go for it. Five across the eyes."

He traces the odd, sharp ridges of Lionel's cheekbones. "You'd like it to hurt, would you?"

"Uh huh." Lionel's eyes droop shut as he absorbs himself in lazily following the movements of Finch's hands.

He feels himself frown. "Why?"

Slowly, Lionel shakes his head. "Dunno. You always know why you want what you want?"

"Not always."

Lionel was a surprise. He became less of one as Finch grew to know him better. The things that call out to Finch are often that way. Their appeal is rarely apparent from the start but in time, the part that resonates with him grows ever clearer.

Finch likes control. Finch likes loyalty. Finch likes slow, rewarding experiences. Lionel has been eager to provide him with all of these.

Gently, Finch pushes at him until Lionel sprawls flat on his back and lets Finch crawl on top of him, sit straddled on his hips. Lionel silently studies the place where their bodies meet.

"I always liked fighting," Lionel offers after a while. "Even scrapping as a kid. I was always short, so I'd get beat to shit a lot, but it didn't…matter. Did wrestling in high school, liked that a little too much, switched to boxing."

His eyebrows must be climbing because Lionel adds "It's just hard to hide, when you're that close to somebody."

"Is that what you'd like?" Finch asks, running palms over Lionel's chest and arms, laying him out calm and flat. "To fight?"

He shrugs. "Sure. I'd like to fight. Didn't think that was really your sport, though."

"Perhaps not."

"Don't even know what your sport would be. Speed chess, maybe."

Finch does not play chess often, does not like it, but he is excellent at it. He elects not to mention this fact. Too much a confirmation of his stereotype. "I used to run," he says. "Before."

Lionel winces. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..."

Finch kisses him on his cringing mouth. "Hush. It's fine."

It's the worst weapon in his arsenal. He only seems to dispense it unwittingly. Lionel has something like a repentant schoolyard bully in him, poking, prodding, gently mocking, and then stepping back the moment he remembers Finch's weak points.

Sometimes Finch wishes he could make Lionel forget about his injury.

"I'm sorry," he's saying again. "I didn't mean to get shitty about...about what happened to you, I just didn't think that..."

"Sounding," Finch points out gently, "was not your sport."

He stops short, unsaid words coiling in his larynx. "No," he says finally. "But that's different."

"Is it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. 'Cause I could hurt you."

"I could've hurt you, Detective."

"It's different," Lionel reiterates. "You don't know how to fight and I can't hit you like I would somebody else. It wouldn't be ri--"

Finch lets his hand fly. It cracks sharp against Lionel's cheek, sends his head snapping to one side. "Right" dies a weak, crumbling death in Lionel's throat.

"Was that right?" Finch asks.

Lionel reorients himself, gingerly presses two fingers to his cheek.

Finch says, "I thought it might be better if you weren't expecting it."

His cheek is swelling slightly, turning a delicious slapped pink. Finch resists the urge to touch.

Lionel’s lips twitch, small and curious.

Finch's throat tightens. "Good?"

Lionel breaks into a massive, open, kind grin and struggles to sit up. "Aw, buddy," he says as he cups a hand against Finch's jaw. "'Course it's good. C'mere."

Finch permits himself to be crushed firm to Lionel's chest. He slings arms around Lionel's neck, lets his head find its natural place pillowed on top of Lionel's.

"You surprised me there," Lionel says.

"Terribly sorry."

"Nah." Lionel's mouth traces delicate, ticklish, circular paths on Finch's throat. When he says, "Kinda liked it," Finch can hear it buzz against his throat.

Finch tangles his hand in Lionel's curls again, tries to ignore the sting radiating through his fingers. He has a hard face, Finch realizes, a rough face. Even though it's round and expressive and kind. Even though it always turns so eagerly toward affection. Finch never would have thought to hit his face before he asked. The suggestion would have made him angry.

Finch pets Lionel's cheek, still warm from the slap. He feels the smile growing on Lionel's face. "Might be a little early in the morning," Lionel says, "for this kind of thing."

"I suppose it is more of an evening activity, now you mention it."

"Yeah," Lionel says. "Yeah, probably." Finch sits back, lets Lionel lift his head. His face is solemn, chastened. "You know, if you don't...if that's not your thing, and you don't wanna do that, it's okay. 'S no big deal."

"Why do you think I don't want to?"

"I dunno. Something about your face."

He does this. Finch can burn his whole life and keep other lives, new lives, scattered around like playing cards in an enormous, hopelessly complex game of find-the-lady, keep his attitude prickly and his mouth tightly shut and never tell Lionel any more than he needs to know, but there was _something about his face_ , and somehow Lionel knows everything. It’s infuriating. It’s _unfair_. Finch never knows what Lionel is thinking and Lionel can see all of his fears and hesitations, doesn’t even understand how it is that he sees so clearly.

Finch clears his throat. “Perhaps,” he says, “it wouldn’t have been my idea. Or my request, certainly. But you’ve been very accommodating of my whims and it would be wrong of me to not consider yours.”

“Yeah.” Lionel chews his lip. “But, I mean, I wanted to do that stuff.”

“Did you?”

“I wanted to try.”

He presses his forehead against Lionel’s. “I’d like to try.”

Finch doesn’t want to try _this_. The knowledge settles in him, heavy and cold. There’s hardly ever a day when Lionel doesn’t have a bruise on his face and Finch doesn’t want to make a new one. Even though he’s hit Lionel before, on his backside, on his soft stomach. Hitting his face makes it seem more real, more cruel.

Lionel grins encouragingly at him. His cheek is smeared hot and red and Finch imagines he can see the  perfect outline of his own palm. Finch strokes the warm apple of his smiling cheek, pinches gently with the tips of his fingers.

He must barely feel it.

* * *

He starts watching Lionel at the gym.

Or, resumes watching Lionel at the gym, technically.

Back in the beginning, Finch watched Lionel do most things. First, because Finch couldn’t trust him; later, because Finch found himself strangely riveted by Lionel’s sweat, his crudeness, his pain; later still because they were together and in the first weeks, Lionel was something dear and valuable that Finch couldn’t stop looking in on to check that he hadn’t been lost.

In any case, Lionel started going to the gym again somewhere between the first and second stages. To get back in shape, he would tell people. To practice his boxing.

He did it because he was afraid of dying. That is something – one of a very few things – that Finch knows about Lionel just from his face.

On a grainy security camera feed, he watches Lionel pound into a punching bag. Sometimes he spars with men he seems to know, big men with broad hands and shoulders whose names Finch has to look up because Lionel has never mentioned them.

 It’s an unfair thing to do to him. Finch knows a lot of people who he’s never mentioned to Lionel, who he never will mention to Lionel. They’re not that sort of…of couple. Very few mutual friends.

It’s fine.

By the end of the day, Finch knows their names, their neighborhoods.

Finch considers gifting the gym with better security cameras. It’s hard to clearly see the glow of sweat on his shoulders, the look on his face when he’s knocked flat on his back, his smile when he’s helped back up again.

He wonders if this is what Lionel likes.

He wonders if Lionel would like to be hit and knocked down and wrestled to the floor and followed back to the showers and fucked, panting and wet, his face pressed to the tile.

Of course, Finch can’t give him that. Not truly. It would have to be playacting, with Lionel deliberately yielding under Finch. Like always.

Finch leans back in his chair, feels his squashy biceps through his shirtsleeves, pats his slightly overgrown stomach. He hasn’t felt self-conscious about his body since he was a teenager. He’s not about to take it up again now, but…

Even when he was running every day to keep himself fit, he couldn’t give Lionel that.

The knowledge that there’s something Lionel might want that Finch can’t give him _itches_ at him.

Bear shoves his cold nose into Finch’s palm and whines.

He takes Bear’s long, pointed face in his hands, scratches the steel-trap jaw, the flat crown of his head, the fluff of his ears. “I suppose it _is_ dinner time.”

Diet food for Bear, because Mr. Reese slips him donuts in the morning sometimes, because Miss Shaw shares food with him when he spends the night at her house.

Thai for Finch. Finch is not on a diet.

Bear stares him down with hungry eyes until Finch sets the nearly-empty carton of drunken noodle on the floor and lets him clean it out.

He checks in with John (on stakeout, bored), with Sameen (enjoying herself, probably doing something illegal), with Root (???, gunfire, abruptly ended the call). He’s not concerned.

He tries not to check in with Lionel.

He does, sometimes, and with good reason. Lionel’s trusted now, but that doesn’t make him safe. The gaps in his knowledge make him vulnerable, his association with them makes him vulnerable. So Finch does need to look in on him from time to time.

But he’s been looking all day. For no real reason other than he wants to know everything about keeping Lionel happy, and Lionel wouldn’t think it’s a real reason.

Finch stretches carefully, feels a groan in his lower back, a more dangerous twinge in his neck. If he left the subway station now, he could catch a late bus back to his Whistler apartment, his Whistler bed. Whistler’s ecru walls and his Tempurpedic. He could be there in just under an hour.

He doesn’t even have the energy to climb the steps.

Inflating the air mattress doesn’t take long, but it’s an unrewarding prospect, a sort of dread thing, because even when he’s this tired, Finch doesn’t want to do that to his back.

Bear is well-trained and he doesn’t bark at the sound the inflator makes. But he wants to. He darts at it, watches suspiciously from behind Finch’s legs until the bed is ready.

Finch lays sheets stiff and creased from the package down on the bed, makes sure his phone is charged and ready, his desktop on standby. He changes into pajamas, full pajamas he brought down one day because he doesn’t think John or Sameen or Miss Groves, heaven forbid, will ever catch him sleeping here, but he’d like to be well-covered if they do.

The bed bulges awkwardly when he lies down on it, balances out a little when Bear climbs on and lies down by his feet. Harold settles flat on his back, his hands folded neatly on his stomach. He leaves his glasses folded on the pillow beside him, lets his eyes slide shut.

For a few moments, there is the hum of towers, the gurgle of pipes, the distant crashing of an operational subway train somewhere far away behind thick walls of concrete.

The thought hisses silkily through the quiet, slyly creeping up the back of his neck and coiling warm at the base of his skull: what would Lionel do for you if he were here right now?

Finch thinks of his warm, generous mouth immediately, eagerly. Soft, ticklish kisses on his stomach, on his hips, broad hands tugging the drawstring waistband of his pajama pants down around his knees, squeezing rough handfuls of his ass. The first heavy, wet stroke of his tongue.

He thinks of Lionel’s hot breath on him, his shivering hesitation. His gruff, perfunctory “This okay?” The shy, perfect contentment on his face, the look he thinks he hides so well, when Finch takes Lionel’s face in his hands and tells him that it’s perfect.

Finch squirms, lifts his hips up toward the imagined warmth of Lionel’s mouth, is met with a jaggedly real burst of pain in his neck. He falls back to the mattress with a truncated whine, lip caught in his teeth, eyes stinging.

Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths.

At the foot of the bed, Bear shifts, lays his head across Finch’s shins. Finch focuses on that, the gentle, warm pressure of Bear across his legs, as he takes air in and lets air go and tries desperately to relax every strand in a twitching knot of muscle. He weathers the pain while making bitter fists in the sheet.

With a parting twinge, it settles. Finch lets out a final whimper and hears the sound reflected back at him from the dark, concrete ceiling.

What he wants now is a massage. A long, slow, firm massage, one that roams all the way down his spine and into his hips and his legs, one that sends him straight to sleep. Lionel’s becoming an expert at those, but he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s a mangler, that one misplaced squeeze, one too-powerful press of his hands and Finch will never walk again. He takes so much care rubbing Finch’s back, it’s almost a tease sometimes, calloused fingers running nervously up and down on skin. Once he’s comfortable, Lionel becomes direct, intuitive, gentle but firm. But at first, his fingers shiver, and Finch almost likes that more than the massage itself.

He groans. There’s something slightly pathetic in having to send yourself to sleep with thoughts of physical therapy with a loved one rather than thoughts of physical intimacy. It is, perhaps, slightly pathetic to be left with only his thoughts.

He has considered bringing Lionel into the subway station before. Not in a serious way, of course. He hasn't made plans.

But he likes the idea of it. Having him here from time to time, the way John is, or Sameen. Arriving suddenly, departing suddenly, but _here_ , at least a little. They would speak face to face more often and maybe that would calm Finch’s urge to watch over him. And maybe he could bed down here with Finch on nights like this, if he didn’t have his son for the night, or if he didn’t have to work in the morning. His commute to work from here would be difficult. Finch checked.

It’s impossible. Lionel would have to learn the shadow map, learn why a shadow map would be necessary. Learn a little bit about who they’re hiding from, why they’re hiding. Lionel’s ignorance is all that’s keeping him safe. Even a vague notion of where the subway station was located might make him a target, a prize.

 _You could bring him here once or twice,_ some treacherous part of his brain whispers, _if you blindfolded him._

He covers his eyes, rubs his temples.

Intriguing, but _shameful_.

Blinded, Lionel would hover close to his side, his hands folded in the crook of Finch’s elbow. He would cling.

Finch resettles himself in bed, pulls against the tightening throb between his shoulders. He tugs idly at the waistband of his pajama pants. Coiling fingers loosely,  he soothes himself with slow, anxious, optimistic strokes.

Every gentle touch would shock him. Every gentle touch already shocks him, because Lionel does not quite believe that he deserves to be touched gently, but if you took away his ability to anticipate, it would leave him gasping and quivering, shy and fearful. But he would open up to it, nuzzle blindly after the warmth of Finch’s hands. Finch would strip him down, spread him naked over the stupid, shifting balloon of a mattress, and make him forget to hide his moans and whimpers under noncommittal grunts.

Finch squirms, tenses hopefully.

The moment has passed, if it was ever there at all.

Finch flops over onto his stomach with a sigh.

This is not the worst thing about his injury. Not even close.

It’s just that it hasn’t been an issue until recently, and Finch isn’t accustomed to the sting.

He detaches himself uneasily, removes himself tooth by sunk-in tooth from frustrating thoughts. Instead, he reviews his plans for tomorrow’s lecture. He imagines new avenues by which to investigate their latest Number, the best ways to tease out information. He tries to remember if he renewed the registration for Burdette’s car, the gently dinged white Corolla. He did it for Whistler’s car, for the one in Crane’s name and in Wren’s. He can’t remember if he covered Burdette. He’ll have to check. In the morning, in the morning. Time to sleep now.

His phone chimes, bright and sinister.

Finch gropes for the glowing screen in the dark, his heart stirring, his feet kicking resignedly at the blankets. He makes himself ready for a small disaster.

A tiny text message beams cheerfully at him and Finch has to blink again and again before he can actually make out individual letters.

It’s from Lionel. _You OK?_

 _Only busy_ , Finch responds. He hesitates. _And sore_ , he adds. Fishing for sympathy. A cynical move.

His response comes swift and easy and, Finch likes to believe, earnest. _Want me to come over?_

Yes, he thinks. Please, yes, come here and lie beside me. Rub my back and kiss my neck and hold my hands in your fists and fuss over me the way that you do, all rough-edged and genuine and warm, like a torn blanket. Tousle my hair and murmur “Okay, tough guy” as though you’re disgusted by how well I pretend to not be in pain.

 _No_ , Finch writes. _Not tonight._

Relieved, Finch thinks. He must be, at least a little. He has work tomorrow. Lionel doesn’t sleep well when he can tell that Finch is in pain; he’s tense and twitching all night, afraid of rolling over in his sleep.

On cue: _You going to sleep soon?_

 _I’m in bed now,_ Finch writes, by way of reassurance. By way of an opening, too, in case Lionel would like to engage in a discussion of hypotheticals. Not that Lionel is much of a wordsmith, but he does try and he’s very, very direct, which is charming sometimes. Astoundingly crude at other times. In any case, it might help Finch sleep, or at the very least make insomnia more enjoyable.

 _Sorry_. _Didn’t mean to keep you up._

 _You aren’t,_ Finch types, very quickly.

_I guess I missed you today._

Don’t, he thinks. I spied on you all day. I never had a chance to miss you.

Instead, he types, _Missed you too. Tomorrow?_

_Yeah. Tomorrow._

Finch sets his phone down face down, so the glow of the screen can’t wake him. Tomorrow. His chest aches with nervous anticipation, like Finch hasn’t felt since they first began to make clumsy overtures to one another. When their every interaction had the potential to turn hideously sour.

Finch supposes that potential still exists. If he made it a project, he could arrange a script, a series of deliberate wrong moves that would make Lionel turn away from him forever.

He could, and it might be for the best. A net gain. No more distractions for Finch, freedom for Lionel. Both of their lives would become slightly smoother. They’d breathe a little easier.

He just doesn’t _want_ to. He doesn’t believe that Lionel wants that either.

But after weeks and months of being under Finch’s thumb, smothered by his attention, he might begin to.

Finch begins to formulate a plan. For tomorrow. 

* * *

 

He waits for Lionel to spot him first. There’s the slow, deliberate steps as he pushes through the double doors into the gym, the wrinkle in his brow, the look on his face that shows, very clearly, that he’s wondering whether he came to the right place. Lionel takes a quick, brute-force look around the room, scanning quickly, eyes passing around the room, over Finch, stopping, and then slowly backing up to fix him with a very curious stare.

Lionel approaches him warily, as if Finch is some sort of dangerous animal, a lion in a living room. His head is tilted, eyes narrowed. He stops about ten feet from Finch and looks down at him, full of unvoiced questions.

Finally, he says in something close to a whisper, “Is this one of your things?” In this context, “things” – Finch believes – means “covert operations”.

“No,” Finch says. “No, it isn’t.”

Fusco nods, but his face doesn’t relax. “You wearing sweatpants?”

Finch glances away, down at the crisp, plastic-scented gym bag between his sneakers with their fresh white laces. “I’m afraid so.”

“OK,” Fusco says. And then, “Why?”

Finch takes a deep breath, pats the empty space on the bench beside him. Obediently, Fusco sits. He drops his own gym bag with its flakey piping and its peeling logo onto his loafers. Fusco waits, hands on knees.

Finch says, “I was thinking about what you said the other night.”

“Uh huh,” Fusco says, in the tone of someone desperately trying to recall what happened the other night, what they said.

“About what you might like to try,” Finch offers.

Fusco’s eyes widen slightly. “ _Oh_.”

“At the moment,” Finch says, “I don’t feel able to provide what you need. I lack the…necessary skillset. Physically. On even the most basic level. And obviously I can’t…I won’t be able to reach a level where I might be able to satisfy that need completely but still, I. I feel. That is, I hoped you could teach me. If that’s not an imposition,” he adds. It’s important, he thinks, to respect Lionel’s time in this matter. This will, in many ways, be a futile endeavor and he is asking for Lionel to devote what little free time he has to him, in part. “I thought it might something nice we could do together,” Finch finishes.

Lionel shakes his head, rubs at the side of his face. He is using his hand to cover up a smile. “ _Wow_ ,” he says.

“I understand that what I’m asking you for would be very difficult…”

“’Difficult,’” Fusco repeats. “I…OK. Man, can I just…” He rubs his face again, pinches hard at the corners of his mouth to squeeze the grin out. He looks Finch in the eye. “You’re asking me to train you,” he says. “Teach you to box. Do I have that right?”

Finch nods.

“OK. For…for. In bed. So you can hit me better. That’s why?”

Again, Finch nods.

“OK.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m just gonna…gonna come out and say it.” Lionel takes a look at Finch’s face, at the frown he knows is forming there, and reconsiders. “That’s _crazy_ ,” he says, finally.

Finch feels dark heat gathering in his cheeks. “Well, it’s not…it’s not as if I want to be a heavyweight champion or something. I just-”

“Yeah, I know, I know. I get it. But it’s still…your reason for wanting to do this. I know, like, Jesus. It’s sweet, OK? In a weird way. But it’s not a good enough reason for you to start with this.”

Finch snorts. “Whereas I’m sure your reason for taking up boxing was perfectly well-reasoned and came from a place of pure logic.”

“I just…Jesus, man. Don’t make me say it.”

Finch scowls.

Lionel teeters for a moment, his mouth open in a shallow way. He closes it, opens it again with teeth bared like he’s about to say something vicious, pauses, closes his mouth again. He clears his throat. “You got a screwed-up neck.” He folds his arms. “That, uh, sounds ignorant, but I dunno what happened there or what the problem actually is or…you never told me. I dunno. I just know you have trouble moving and it hurts you sometimes, and- ”

“It’s never,” Finch snaps, “stopped me from doing anything.”

“Yeah, it has,” Fusco tells him softly. “All the time. You know it does.”

It’s an odd, stinging thing to hear from Lionel and it stuns Finch for a moment. They sit in silence, listening to the sounds of other people sparring, the pound of fists on leather, the squeak of shoes.

“Doesn’t make you weak or anything,” Lionel says, raking hands through his hair. “I know that. I know you’re tough. Maybe it’s fine and I just teach you to throw a punch. But maybe it’s not fine and I knock you over and you fall the wrong way and you can’t walk anymore. And I don’t wanna deal with that maybe, you know?” 

Finch raises an eyebrow. “That’s an extreme scenario.”

“Not that extreme. Boxing fucks up young, healthy people. Every day. And you’re pushing 60.” And you’re _crippled_ , he visibly refrains from saying.

Finch, in turn, refrains from pointing out that in fact, he’s pushed _past_ 60\. Just past. But still.

“I’m not trying to be a dick. I just don’t wanna hurt you. Especially not over that stupid thing I said. We can do other stuff together.” He grins shyly. “You wanna go birdwatching again?”

Finch takes Lionel’s shirtsleeve between two fingers and plucks. “You don’t like birdwatching.”

“I’m not wild about it,” he admits. “I mean, I don’t know shit about birds. I kinda like lying in the dirt listening to you talk about ‘em, though.”

“You fell asleep,” Finch says, “last time.” Finch had been speaking to him about the eastern kingbird he had in his sights, all about the feeding and flight patterns, when Lionel began to snore gently. He remembers Fusco sprawled beside him on the grass in Central Park with his head pillowed on his arms, golden afternoon light and blue shadows of leaves shifting over his skin, a beatific smile playing over his face.

That same smile returns in a small way. “Sure. It was real relaxing.”

Finch leans into him, bumping shoulders. He wonders if, in this space, with these people around, Lionel will push him away. But he doesn’t seem to mind. “Please reconsider? It’s not as though I really want to learn boxing. I only want to improve my strike. Matters of stance and…” Lionel slips an arm around him, heavy hand curled secure at his hip. “…And power, I suppose. If you were to recommend some exercises, I suppose that might be enough to begin with. But I’d rather have your help.”

Lionel studies his face very solemnly. “You really wanna try it that much?”

“I really do.”

“But you don’t want to hit me either. Not like that. I can tell.”

 _From my face, doubtless. Just from looking at my face._ “You do a great many things for me that you don’t really want to do, that you’d never do if not for the fact that I asked you to share something with me, or to try something new for my sake. If I denied you the same willingness to explore that you’ve shown me, that would make me a very poor partner.” He lets his head fall against Lionel’s. Their cheeks brush and Finch feels the creeping prickle of his returning stubble. “This is about what I want too.”

Fusco blinks at him thoughtfully. His eyelashes flick against Finch’s face. “You take this kinda thing really seriously, huh?”

Unsure of what he means by that, Finch nods.

Fusco considers. “I guess I do too.” He bites his lip. “OK. Make a fist for me.”

“You’ll do it?” Finch brightens.

“I didn’t say I’d do it. I said make a fist for me.”

Finch obliges, balls up his fist and holds it up awkwardly, ready to strike but unsure of the stance.

“Nope,” Fusco says almost immediately. “Nope, nuh-uh. Come here.” He takes Finch’s curled up hand in his own, completely covers it, and pulls it towards him. Gingerly, Finch lets his arm relax and be manipulated. Fusco studies his extended fist a moment, shakes his head. “The big guy teach you this?” he says, disgustedly, unrolling Finch’s fingers one by one.

“Mr. Reese has given me self-defense lessons in the past,” Finch says, “but none of them have involved boxing.”

“Yeah,” Fusco says. He begins to dig his thumb hard into the palm of Finch’s hand. “I can tell. Relax a little, huh?”

Finch does his best to release the muscles in his hand.

“OK,” Fusco says. “So, first thing: you let your hands be nice and loose and relaxed when you fight, OK? Right before impact, you tighten up, and then it hits real hard. But before then: loosey goosey. Got it?”

“I think so.” Fusco has arranged his hand into something more-or-less fistlike, but a good deal more relaxed. He curls Finch’s thumb and lets it lie outside the fingers, across the last row of knuckles before the fingertips.

“Second thing: don’t put your thumb inside your fingers like that ‘cause that’s a real good way to break it. Keep it out of the way, on the side or under the knuckles like this. You with me?”

“I am.”

“What the hell is that guy teachin’ you?” Lionel murmurs.

“I’ve been told,” Finch says, “that if I find myself in a physical altercation, I’m to drive my thumb into my attacker’s eye socket and twist. That is about the extent of my education.” He pauses. “So I suppose that’s another good reason to keep my thumb protected.”

Lionel sucks his teeth. “Yeah,” he says, eventually. “You can’t do that in boxing, but yeah.” He takes a deep breath. “Listen. I dunno how I feel about doing this for, uh, for me. But you’re pretty overdue for a self-defense lesson and you should at least be able to throw an OK punch in your line of work.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying all al-” Finch is stopped short by the press of one of Lionel’s fingers against his lips. His mouth is set in a sharp little frown.

“Just so we’re clear,” he says, “I’m in charge. I set the pace, I set your limits, and if you – even for a second – feel like you might not be up to something, you say so, we take a break, and we figure out where to go from there. If you push yourself too hard and end up re-breaking your neck or paralyzing yourself or whatever, it’s on you. Got it?”

There’s a darkness and a tension in his eyes that says that if Finch gets hurt in these lessons, Lionel will never forgive himself, no matter whose fault it is. Finch gently pulls Fusco’s hand away from his mouth. “Of course.”

Lionel relaxes, just a little. “OK,” he says, slapping Finch on the shoulder. “Go get yourself some gloves and a helmet. I gotta change.”

* * *

 

One lesson does not make Finch a champion boxer, or even a competent one. Finch suspects he barely passes muster, even as beginners go. He supposes he knew this would be the case, going in.

He supposes he also should have known that Lionel would be patient with him. His touches are brusque and businesslike, but kind as he rearranges Finch, corrects his stance and his posture and even his breathing with a hand on Finch’s stomach.

“From your diaphragm,” he says, patting, “here. Like when you sing.”

“I don’t sing.”

“Sure you do.” Lionel presses against Finch’s stomach as it rises with each breath. “I hear you in the shower sometimes.”

One of the ways in which Lionel is dangerous is that it’s difficult to tell whether he is awake or asleep. Another way in which he is dangerous is that when Lionel demonstrates a jab on a black leather punching bag, Finch feels the impact in the soles of his feet.

“See?” he says, recapturing the swinging bag in one thick, crooked arm and bringing it close to his chest. “Nothing to it. I’ll even hold onto it for you.”

His smile is sharp-edged, bright and curious.

Very dangerous.

Finch jabs. No one feels it in their feet.

The imagined interlude in the shower turns out to be just that. All of Finch’s planned scenarios included a mysteriously deserted shower room, utterly free of interlopers. The reality does not quite measure up. Finch contents himself with stolen glances at Lionel’s broad chest and strong back, shiny with water and cheap soap from a hand pump.

Frankly, Finch is not certain he has the energy for anything more than glances. He can feel himself trembling under the water as more sweat than he knew he was capable of producing is sluiced off and away and down a big, industrial drain. In the locker room mirror, he looks wrung-out and drained, eyes tired, skin mottled with pink blotches.

But Finch can jab. Finch understands the basic premise of the jab.

“That was fun,” Lionel remarks as he shoves a fistful of sweat-soaked clothing into his gym bag. He sounds slightly surprised. “You have fun?”

Finch, in the process of knotting a tie around his throat, says, “I did,” and finds that he is sincere.

“You hurting at all?”

Finch rolls his shoulders gingerly. Lionel urged him to stretch early on in the lesson and last night’s tension seems dead for now, or maybe just lying in wait. His skin buzzes with endorphins. If he’s hurt, he won’t know until later.

Airily, he says, “Never better.”

Lionel doesn’t speak, just fixes him with a critical stare as he zips up his duffel bag.

Finch is often dishonest with Lionel, for reasons he feels are defensible. This, perhaps, is not one of the defensible cases. “I can’t be certain right now. But at the moment, I feel…optimistic.”

He nods. “OK. Well, if you don’t wake up tomorrow feeling like shit, you wanna…you wanna try this again, same time next week?”

“I suppose. If I can.” “If I can” is a permanent fixture in any planning they do. They can’t be certain of anything in advance.

“No, same here,” he says. “Um. You free tonight?”

* * *

 

It is, Finch admits as Lionel straddles him and presses him back against the pillows, energizing. In its way.

Perhaps it’s been too long since Finch had any regular form of exercise. He remembers runner’s high, that gleeful lightness in his body, but this is different. The lightness is there, but there’s an ache to it as well. An ache that makes Finch feel stronger. Endorphins, he thinks. Remember that you will wake up in real pain.

Pain, he thinks, may be beside the point. Finch is going to wake up in pain most mornings, regardless.

And he did have fun, he reminds himself. Finch shuts his eyes, feels a fluttery gasp escape his lungs as Lionel settles onto him.

“OK?” Lionel asks. His voice has a tightness to it. Restraint.

Finch grabs blindly for Lionel’s hips. He finds them, heavy bones, hard muscle, soft flesh. Finch tugs at him, aimlessly, unsure of where or how exactly he wants Lionel to move. “Please?” The give of Lionel’s skin under his fingertips reassures him.

“Alright,” Lionel says. “Pushy.”

He lifts himself until they are just barely touching and lowers himself back down again, thighs shuddering beneath Finch’s palms. Finch curves up into him, lets his eyes flutter open. He finds Lionel with a bright flush on his cheeks and his chest, watching Finch’s face intently.

It’s a pleasantly weightless moment. Largely because Lionel stops short of putting any real pressure on Finch. He’s supporting his own weight right now, hovering as close as he can. Finch can see the faint flicker of muscles in his legs and hips and stomach, jumping. Finch reaches out impulsively and traces over them with his fingertips. “I suppose that must be very good exercise.”

Lionel winces. “Don’t tickle me. I’ll go down like a house of cards.”

He finds Lionel’s rough hands and squeezes at them.

Lionel rolls his hips in a slow, lazy wave and Finch intertwines their fingers.

As always, he’s not quite sure where to look. Their hands snarled together makes for a cozy sort of metaphor, and Finch lets himself stare for a long while in wooly-edged satisfaction. And faces, of course, are important. But he must be sneaky about that, because Lionel cringes away from intent observation.

If he only knew.

When Finch is able to study Lionel’s face at length, he finds it shockingly, nakedly expressive. Every instant of mirth and doubt and fear is there, writ large. Large but, perhaps, in a poor, smudged hand, because often Finch can’t read him. The things that crush Lionel or make him laugh into his palm are somewhere inside his head, and Finch can’t ask him.

Or he could, but Lionel wouldn’t give him a straight answer.

When Lionel catches him at it and turns away, Finch finds that the space where their bodies meet, where Lionel slides snug around him, holds a sort of crude fascination. Perhaps it’s a metaphor as much as their tangled hands are, even if it is far less elegant.

Mostly, Finch watches himself slip into Lionel because he knows that if he stares long enough, Lionel will think it’s safe to begin watching him. Analyzing his face. Eagerly, needily searching for approval or maybe pain.

Finch wishes sometimes that he was able to see his own face. Partly because he wants to seek out his tells. Partly because Finch is a little concerned about his facial expressions. He’s never seen them. He doesn’t know.

They might be very embarrassing.

He doesn’t look at Lionel’s face (he’s biting his lip so he doesn’t cry out, Finch knows because his eyes are greedy traitors that need to glance everywhere, if only for a moment). He focuses on his body instead. The scrape on his knee and the bruise on his hairline have healed. New day, new skin, except for a bruise on his thigh, about the size of a thumb and deep purple, a bruise on his forearm, gray-green and the size of a fist. Bruise high on his stomach, over the sainted diaphragm. Dark and deep, like a tattoo of the knuckles that struck him. No gloves. Finch twists his hand loose from Lionel’s grip and puts his palm over the mark.

Lionel’s face relaxes (his eyes were shut tight and his mouth was open, gasping, sighing, until Finch distracted him, and Finch knows because he needs to, like a sickness). He doesn’t stop moving but he lets his hand fall over Finch’s, over the bruise. Finch can feel his heartbeat through the swollen tissue.

“Somethin’ at work the other day,” he pants. “It’s no big deal.”

Finch frowns, runs the backs of his fingers over it as if he could wipe it away.

Lionel adds, “Anyway, I arrested him.”

As though that fixes it. As though Finch’s animosity towards the people who mark Lionel, the people who make him afraid to be alone, could be waved away with words, with the knowledge that they were locked away somewhere. As though Lionel’s body matters so little.

Lionel says, “You could try your luck if you wanted.”

Finch blinks up at him.

He’s still moving his hips in steady, pleasant circles on top of Finch. His face still has that high flush, lips still pink and bitten. But there’s a light in his eye, something eager and unhinged. A blazing, unscratched itch.

“Go for it,” Lionel says, tapping the purple-green mottled spot between his ribs. “Right here. Show me what you learned today.”

Oh dear. “Oh, don’t…” he begins, but Lionel leans back further than usual, takes him deep, and Finch’s brain comes to a white-hot, stuttering halt. “It’ll _hurt_ ,” he hears himself say. His voice is thin and piteous, and he wishes he could say it over again.

“Yeah,” Lionel says. He’s petting the back of Finch’s hand with his fingertips. His thighs shiver against Finch’s hips as he lifts himself up again. “It’s OK, though. Show me.”

Slowly, as if in a trance, Finch pulls his hands out of Lionel’s grip. He holds his fists up close to his chest, wriggles a little against the pillows propping him up to mimic Lionel’s bouncy gait when he’s sizing up that black leather bag, ready to strike. _Loosey goosey_ , Finch reminds himself, letting his fists uncurl by a few degrees, letting his hands relax. Remember to breathe. He looks at the bruise, the purple black violets of trapped blood under Lionel’s poor skin, and sizes up his target.

When he strikes he remembers to breathe out from the diaphragm. He barely remembers to tighten his fist before impact. But he does remember.

He sees that his fist hit slightly left of center before Lionel doubles up around him.

This is when the regrets come in.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Finch whispers as Lionel crumples forward, wheezes in his ear. “Oh, no, oh, dear, I’m so sorry.” He throws his free arm around Lionel’s neck, across his broad shoulders now bent and rising and falling with each gasping breath. The other arm, the right arm, the striking arm is buried between them, still knotted beneath the arch of Lionel’s ribs. Finch unclenches his fist and begins to pet uselessly at his stomach. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, are you alright? Dear, are you…?”

It takes him altogether too long to realize that Lionel’s hips are still moving.

Finch falls silent and waits a moment, listens to Lionel’s ragged gasps against his throat.

“You did good,” he finally says, voice hoarse and shattered. “Holy shit.”

Finch asks him, hesitantly, “Are you alright?”

“Uh huh.” Lionel seems unwilling or unable to speak for more than a few seconds. He sounds like breathing is pain, like there’s glass in his lungs, but he’s still fucking himself against Finch. If anything, his movements are faster, dirtier, more eager. He’s hard against Finch’s stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Finch says again, touching the back of his head, his throat, anything. He is dimly aware that he’s pushing up to meet him, damn the consequences, that one of them or both of them is whining

“’S good,” he mumbles, his mouth blowing wet, jagged bursts of air against Finch’s ear. His hand slides between their bodies, reaching for Finch’s trapped hand and pressing it hard to his stomach. “That’s you,” he snarls against Finch’s ear. “That’s your bruise. No other bastard touched me.” His teeth find Finch’s earlobe and sink in.

Finch, not for the first time today, surprises himself.

When he becomes aware of himself again, he knows only that Lionel has spent himself onto Finch’s stomach, that Lionel’s face is tucked in the crook of his neck, that they are curled together in an overheated tangle of limbs, propped up by pillows. It feels very nearly ordinary, except Finch’s knuckles are sore. And his ear.

As if having the same thought, Lionel says, “Did I bite your ear?” He sounds a little surprised at himself, a little bit reproachful.

“Yes.” Finch reaches up and tests his earlobe between two fingers. He feels the even, rectangular imprints of his bite there. He does not feel broken skin. “I suppose you did. No harm done.”

“Good,” says Lionel. He sighs, small and contented, and nuzzles his head against Finch’s shoulder.

“What about you?” Finch asks. “I…”

“Nnnhm.” Lionel’s fingertips fall lightly over Finch’s lips. “Shaddup. Stop being sorry.”

“You won’t be hurt too badly,” he asks, “will you?”

Lionel chuckles softly against his skin. “Nah. You didn’t put me in the hospital or anything.”

 “Well, I should _hope_ not.”

They fall quiet. Finch reacquaints himself with his surroundings: Lionel’s bedroom with its yellowed, water-stained ceiling and its whirring fan in the bedroom window. The warring textures and thicknesses of every pillow Lionel owns piled up under his back. Their gym bags on the mottled beige carpet where they dropped them. Lionel throws his arm over Finch’s belly.

“That was a really good punch, though,” he says, finally.

Finch clicks his tongue. “Don’t patronize me.”

“Hey, I mean, you’re not taking on Mayweather anytime soon, but for somebody who just started today, it was pretty damn good.”

It’s one part condescension, Finch knows. It may be many, many more parts fondness and admiration and genuine, pleased surprise, but it is at least one part condescension, because Finch could only hurt Lionel by striking at a preexisting sore spot.

He doesn’t even _want_ to hurt Lionel.

Finally, he says, “I’m not entirely certain who Mayweather is, but thank you.”

Lionel groans and buries his face in Finch’s cheek. “Read a fuckin’ book, you animal. Doesn’t know who Floyd Mayweather is…” He trails off into soft muttering, lazy nibbling along Finch’s jawline.

Eventually, he drifts off.

Finch does what he usually does when Lionel falls asleep: he checks his phone and finds that Miss Shaw will be sleeping for the next four hours and would not like to be disturbed, that Mr. Reese is trailing their current Number to Utica (Finch requests an update, receives one seconds later, determines that Mr. Reese must be very bored indeed), and that Miss Groves has borrowed his Cesna for reasons she has chosen not to elaborate on. Finch would like some more information on the last thing, but ultimately decides that further inquiry, at this point, would be fruitless.

But _how_ did she find the Cesna?

Playing Whistler for a moment, he answers emails, confirms meetings with two of his graduate students (one promising, one less so, he privately believes). Playing Burdette, he begins the application to re-register his beaten Toyota Corolla. Just in case.

Playing Finch, he strokes the back of Lionel’s head when he stirs in his sleep.

He frowns down at him for a moment, watches his relaxed, sleeping face where it rests, pillowed against Finch’s shoulder. “You were supposed to be a pleasant diversion,” he tells him. “Don’t be complicated.”

A lie, of course. This was always complicated. They’re both well aware of that.

The bruise is now overlaid with a red, puffy mark, slightly off-center. A future bruise. Finch wishes his aim had been truer. Then he could claim the whole mark as his own. As it is, there will be a second bruise, a fainter bruise that overlaps the first.

Finch covers the whole thing with his palm.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dien, your birthday was six months ago i'm a bad friend :(
> 
> merr crismas
> 
> also I have updated the tags for this fic, please remain informed.

“So suppose,” Lionel says, touching the tops of Finch’s gloves with big, flat pads strapped to his palms, making his patting catcher’s-mitt clumsy, “I go to hit you.”

“Are you going to hit me?”

His face splits into a shy grin. To cover his eyes, he brushes his thick forearm across his forehead and mimes wiping away sweat. “No,” he says. “But suppose.”

This is their fourth lesson.  Lionel has run him through a thousand repetitive motions: breathing, stretches, stances, jab after jab after jab. Through it all, Lionel hasn’t laid a finger on him except to gently correct him, except to gather Finch’s punches in the center of his palm. Finch can scarcely imagine.

It seems that Lionel sees this.

“Suppose,” he tries again, “ _somebody_ goes to hit you. ‘Cause you got a smart mouth, Glasses. It’s gonna happen someday.”

Finch raises one eyebrow. “That seems within the realm of possibility.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.” And he slides, in that peculiar way he has, from calm and grinning to ready to fight. His fists are up before Finch has time to begin to get into position. Lionel waits patiently, head cocked, while Finch readies himself. “Somebody goes to hit you,” Lionel reminds him, returning to his story. “You could block him…”

Finch responds, bringing his hands up to protect his brow, his ears, his cheeks. Lionel gives him a few light taps on the backs of his hands through the gloves, his wrists, his arms, his shoulders. A gentle demonstration of how someone might beat him.

“But you don’t wanna just stand there and take it, right? OK, badass,” he says, tapping Finch’s gloves. “I wanna show you something.”

Finch lowers his fists cautiously.

Lionel says, “Gonna show you the low jab.”  His fists come up, his shoulders round out and he dances a moment, foot to foot. “You’ve been jabbing straight on, which is fine if the guy you’re fighting doesn’t move but if you wanna catch him by surprise…”

Fluidly, Lionel drops, his head ducking, his fist snapping up from under at Finch’s stomach. Finch tenses with a tight, involuntary yelp as Fusco’s hand stops dead an inch from his belly. Fusco pats him with the back of his hand.

“Not gonna hit you,” he murmurs.

“Of course.” Finch feels his face color.

“You OK?” he asks, blinking up at Finch from his bulldoggish fighting stance. His eyes are very kind, very concerned, very blue.

Finch swallows, nods. “You only startled me.”

Lionel straightens up and pats Finch on the upper arm. “OK. We’re gonna do the same again, but real slow. Hang on, lemme…” He brings one mitted fist up, tugs at the Velcro with his teeth until it comes loose. “This time, you take a jab at my face, like we’ve been practicing, and I’m gonna go for the low jab, and you’ll see how it all comes together. Again: real slow.” He undoes the other punching mitt and drops it on the mat beside its brother. He clenches and unclenches his newly free fists. “Don’t go in all half-cocked and knock my teeth out, alright?”

Finch brings his gloves up again. “I’m certain you have nothing to fear on that score.”

“Are you?” Lionel rolls his shoulders, drops himself into position and weaves back and forth, sharkishly. “I dunno, man. There’s something scrappy and mean in you, deep down.”

“Do you think so?”

He grins toothily. “I really do. Before you swing, tell me about your jab there.”

Finch tenses a moment, adjusts his stance and feels his newly-creased shoes squeak on the floor. “Toes pointed towards you.”

“Good.”

“Thumb on the outside. Arms and shoulders nice and loose.” Or as loose as he can make them. Finch bounces a little to be sure.

“Alright. And?”

“Twist,” Finch says, demonstrating slowly how his fist screws through the air as he strikes.

“OK, smart guy. Why?”

Finch thinks a moment. “Efficiency. And more power.”

“Sure,” Lionel nods. “And?”

Finch blinks at him.

“ _And_ ,” Lionel repeats, “if you do it right, you can kinda…” He makes a vicious wrenching motion with his fist. “…Cut the guy up a little.”

Finch winces.

“Relax,” Lionel says. “You’re not gonna do that today.”

“I’d rather not do that on any day.”

“So don’t,” he says. “You ready?”

Finch breathes deep, shifts his weight, left foot, right foot, in preparation for the deliberate lunge he has to make. The footwork is difficult for him. More difficult is the fact that Lionel knows this, that Lionel will offer simpler, weaker alternatives if he catches Finch struggling. Finch isn’t so foolish that he’d risk injury for this experiment, this _hobby_. The majority of the adjustments to proper form that Lionel suggests on behalf of his spine, Finch takes. But he refuses to be condescended to over a matter of foot placement. He exhales. “Ready.”

“’K,” Lionel says. “Go for my face. _Slowly_. But watch what I do.”

Finch strikes. Very slowly. He lurches, just a little, when he takes an over-exaggerated slow motion step forward but otherwise it’s all rather satisfying. Moving as slowly as he can allows Finch to make a checklist in his head as he moves: feet pointed toward Lionel? Check. Exhaling on the jab? Check. Arm twisting naturally as it extends? Check. Fist tightening before impact? Nearly, nearly, _check_.  If only he had the time to think things through this way every time he tried to hit Lionel. He’d feel much more confident in his abilities. Intellectually, Finch knows what his body needs to be doing, but in the heat of the moment, he always seems to forget one or two things.

His clenched fist drifts through the air, an inch away from where it might presumably split the shiny, smooth skin that covers Lionel’s cheekbone wide open, like time-lapse video of a blossoming flower, when Lionel finally moves. At first, he seems to curl in on himself. His head ducks, his shoulders come up, his whole upper body seems to fold in on itself. Lionel brings his right fist up to guard his cheek.

But his left foot, his left foot darts forward, and as it does, his left fist snaps up.

He doesn’t twist his arm, Finch notices, almost dreamily. It comes up as the rest of Lionel ducks beneath Finch’s jab, propelled gently into Finch’s stomach like a diving board springing upward in the absence of the weight of the diver.

Gamely, Finch crumples around the blow.

Lionel blinks up at him from his hunched position. “Y’see?”

Finch nods, dry-mouthed. “I believe so.”

What he believes is, he’d like to watch Lionel do this again a few times, at full speed. He believes this is a dirty trick, a savage little lunge, and Lionel executes it beautifully.

Still holding position, still looking at him up from under, like a beaten dog, Lionel says, “OK, smart guy. What’d you do wrong?”

 _No._ Finch rustles back through his mental checklist again, going point by point and cross-referencing with his own held position, even as his extended arm begins to shiver and his shoulder gives a small, warning twinge. _No. That was **textbook**. How **dare** you._

Lionel taps his still-extended arm with a heavily padded hand. “Gotta bring your arm back in, buddy,” he says, smiling weakly. Reassuringly, Finch imagines. Softening the blow. “Even if I getcha. You gotta defend yourself.”

Belatedly, Finch tries to draw his arm back to his chest, but Lionel catches it, sets his hand against the point of Finch’s elbow. “’Cause…can I show you?” he asks.

Finch nods.

“When somebody hits you, you can always go back to home base. You can duck down, defend yourself, wait for your next opening. But when you’re extended like this,” he says, running his hands up and down Finch’s arm, “you leave yourself open. So if something like that happens – you go for the straight jab, I duck under and go for the low jab…” Here, he touches Finch’s stomach again, fingertips tickling through his loose t-shirt. “…and then you’re distracted, you forget to bring it in again. That leaves you wide open for me to go like…” He tilts his head, gives Finch an inquiring look as if to say “May I?” and then, very slowly, the right fist that was guarding Lionel’s cheek slides forward, over Finch’s extended arm, to stroke heavy against Finch’s cheek. “And then,” Lionel tells him, “you’re in real trouble.”

Finch clears his throat, tries not to lean too hard into the sharp knobs of his chapped knuckles. “I’ll make a note of that.”

“Alright.” Lionel pats the side of Finch’s face. “Relax.” The two of them break position and stand up straight again, shoulders loose. “Nice thing about the low jab is it’s less obvious than the straight jab and it’s a little bit easier, a little bit more direct. And if you’re a smaller guy,” Lionel says, nodding to Finch, “it plays to your strengths.”

“’Smaller guy’?” Finch repeats, doubtfully. His eyes are level with the top of Lionel’s head, which is something he enjoyed even when he disliked Lionel. He relished the extra two or three inches he had on this bitter, scowling, powerless man.

These days, Finch finds that Lionel has a habit of ducking his head under Finch’s chin and settling there against his throat, pretending to be smaller than he is.

 _Smaller_ _guy_. What a thing to say.

Lionel looks very pleased with himself as he stretches, cracks his back. “You might be taller than me, guy, but so is everybody else. And I’d feel a hell of a lot better I could at least teach you to use the low ground to your advantage. ‘Cause with almost every other guy you meet, you’re gonna be in it.”

“’Every other guy I meet.’ Do you imagine me lashing out at passersby?”

Lionel, clearly imagining exactly that, snorts.

Glowing to himself at having made Lionel laugh, Finch adds, “You’re speaking as though I was up for some sort of title. Do you know something I don’t?”

Lionel is bent, hands on knees, shaking his head, panting and smiling. “No,” he says finally. “’Course you’re not fighting anybody. Even if you get into that kinda situation, I don’t want you to fight anybody.”

Finch cocks his head. “No?”

“No. Somebody comes at you, do the eye thing Wonderboy taught you. Or better yet, clear out and get somebody else to do your fighting for you. Wonderboy, me, Shaw, Cocoa Puffs, the dog – anybody. Don’t try to box anyone for real, OK?”

Finch finds himself oddly stung. Not that he’s under any kind of delusion of competence in this area, but. But. He doesn’t know. He bristles.

Lionel seems to sense this immediately. “It’s just. You know. Easier to talk about like that. Self-defense.”

“As opposed to…”

“That it’s for…for me.” He takes a step forward, head down. “I mean, at least a little bit. Whatever else it is, it’s a little bit for me, right?”

Mostly for him. Finch has to admit that he’s enjoying himself: the exercise, the closeness, the feeling of satisfaction when he gets it _right_ , or as right as he can. But mostly, mostly, it is for the rich, slapped flush of Lionel’s skin, the naked, liquid devotion in his eyes. If Finch knew a way to bring that out without hitting him, without being unfair, he would. As it is…

Lionel is close to him, now, toe to toe, head inclined towards Finch’s throat like he wants to rest there, like he would if they weren’t in this public space, if there weren’t other men training feet away. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t wanna be…I don’t wanna tell you you can’t do something. It’s just that if I’m callin’ this self-defense…I mean, the idea is that you hurt the other guy real bad and get out of there fast, so there doesn’t have to _be_ a fight. I don’t want you to fight anybody. I, uh…”

Finch curls one hand at the nape of Lionel’s neck and holds, not drawing him any closer, although the lively, adrenaline sweat smell is giving him peculiar ideas. Gracefully, he takes him off the hook: “I understand.”

He ducks neatly out from under Finch’s grip, and when his head comes up again there is a bright, filthy smile plastered on his face. “Anyway,” he says. “We both know you’re more dangerous than me. Let me have this one thing.”

This is undeniably true, and it does make Finch feel better, in a sick sort of way. What is a physical, scientific understanding of the low jab compared to the ability to survey anyone anywhere, to a natural, intimate understanding of the workings of Lionel’s laptop’s built-in webcam, the one Lionel only barely knows how to turn on. Why can’t he let Lionel have this one thing?

“Alright,” Lionel says, bending to pick up the discarded punching mitts. “You wanna call it a night, or give it a shot before we go?”

“Mmm?”

“The low jab,” Lionel says, slow and patient. “You wanna try?”

“On you?”

“Nah, on Wonderboy. Yeah, on me.” He puts a punching mitt on one hand but waits, fingers wound in the Velcro strap, on Finch’s word. He’s teasing, play-exasperated, but his eyes have an anxious earnestness to them. Lionel’s fingers twist the strap around, around, buzzing nervously.

 _He is hoping that I won’t end the lesson without striking him_ , Finch realizes.

Finch’s hand is clammy, tense inside the glove. “Oh, I suppose.”

Lionel’s face turns sunny. He pulls the strap tight around his wrist. “You need to see it again or do you think you have it?”

“I think I’ve seen it enough to make a reasonable approximation.”

“Yeah?” Friendly skepticism in the set of his brows.

“Yes.”

“Alright, alright.” He secures the second mitt to his palm, pulls the strap tight with his teeth. “What I’m gonna do…” he begins through the clench of his teeth. He releases, claps his hands together with a muted thud. “…is I’m gonna take a swipe at you. Not for real, I’m not gonna hit you; I just wanna see you take a crack at that combination I showed you. You okay with that?”

Finch nods. He brings his fists up, scoots his lead foot into position, sneakers squelching against the mat.

“Relax,” Lionel murmurs. “Shoulders loose. Hands loose, too; I know what you’re doing.”

He allows his fingers to uncurl by a single degree. It’s impossibly hot and slick inside these gloves and his fingers are aching, raw. “Should I hit you? Really try to hit you, I mean?”

Lionel is quiet for a moment. He swallows, Finch imagines, dry-throated. “Sure,” he finally says. “If you want to.”

 _If you want to._ Finch rolls his shoulders, tries to make them loose. He clenches and unclenches his fists, extending his sweat-slick fingers against the weight of the gloves’ padding. What Finch wants, at the moment, is a shower. A massage to counter the faint, persistent warning signs in his neck, in the space between his shoulders. Bed, his real bed with the good sheets and very good mattress, the one he can’t go to, the one that’s in an empty house licensed to someone he isn’t right now, some Swan or Crane or Fisher. An end to the fear and paranoia that leads him to distractions like this, that makes him pursue an asset for kindness, for attention, for a project, for something small and joyous and uncomplicated.

It’s an unfair assessment of their situation. For quite some time now, his pursuit of Lionel has been for its own sake. In this hypothetical, he would want Lionel too, beside him or on top of him or beneath him or just out of sight but close, within earshot, cozily filling the space.

And, in a moment of bright, raw sincerity, he realizes he would want this too. He would want to strike that kind, dependable face. He would like to do it well, in a way that makes Lionel praise his form. He would like to buzz, neon with adrenaline. He would like to recontextualize the red, the purple, the sickly yellow traces of violence on Lionel’s skin, to transform them into badges of honor and ownership if they must be there at all.

Finch’s foot is pointed like an arrow right at Lionel. “I’m ready,” he says.

Lionel nods, takes a deep breath, darts his padded hand toward Finch’s face at half-speed, deliberately slow.

Finch inhales.

Finch drops.

The position, he realizes immediately, is uncomfortable. His back creaks as he imitates the way Lionel dropped out of harm’s way and for a moment he thinks _oh no, oh no, I can’t_ but it’s not, not _so_ bad and his fist drives up straight, untwisted into Lionel’s stomach.

It’s not good, he thinks. There’s a sort of soft, deflating quality to the strike. Or to Lionel’s stomach, perhaps. It doesn’t feel like true impact. It feels weak, false, like beating a pillow in anger.

But it does land. It does land, and Lionel’s blow passes him by as he crumples around Finch’s fist. Finch has missed an item on the checklist, he’s forgotten to bring up his free hand to guard his face but it’s fine, it’s all fine and he recovers, brings it up, readies himself.

Because Finch’s first low jab may have been a weak, unpracticed thing, but in the past few weeks he’s made a study of the straight jab and his opening is there.

Finch inhales.

And on the exhale, Finch strikes.

___

 

Finch sticks his whole upper body into the loudly humming ice machine, hacking at the last layer of fused-together cubes with a plastic scoop, and decides to start looking for a new hotel. He gave up, painfully, on the ones he’d like to take Lionel to. Grand beds. Opulent atmosphere. A spa where he can take Lionel, watch him coaxed, slowly and bitterly, into relaxation by expert hands. “Worked over,” Lionel would call it, swiping anxiously at the oil on his hands and vigorously denying the flush spreading across his face and chest.

Lionel doesn’t seem to begrudge him the loss of the fine hotels or any other aspect of his shrinking budget for that matter. Conspicuous displays of wealth always made Lionel uncomfortable, which Finch is big enough to admit was a part of why he enjoyed making them. He _liked_ spending money on Lionel and watching him grapple with the idea that possibly Finch sincerely believed he was worth the trouble.

But Finch has to budget now. Finch has to think about bullets and medical supplies and well-placed bribes over his own hobbies. Which is sobering. Healthy, probably. He hasn’t had to actually consider money in years; it’s just become something that sticks to him, something that accumulates while he sleeps.

And Lionel _is_ more comfortable in places like this, unsettlingly at ease with creaking springs and by-the-hour rates.

Still, Finch thinks as he shovels a scoopful of jagged ice into a plastic bag, even Lionel would agree that this place is unsatisfactory.

It doesn’t even have to get _much_ better. Chain hotel standards would be a significant upgrade.

He ties off the end of the plastic bag in a small, tight knot and returns to their room.

He swipes the keycard, waits a few agonizing seconds for the lock to clunk, and opens the door to find that Lionel has gotten the jump on him. He’s sprawled on his back, shoes and pants lying in a haphazard tangle at the foot of the bed from where he kicked them off, shirt and clip-on tie pooled near the nightstand. His undershirt and briefs are still on, presumably purely so that Finch may have the pleasure of removing them. Lionel pushes himself up on one elbow, smiles in a way that emphasizes the tight, shiny heat of his swelling cheek.

“You fuckin’ exhaust me,” Lionel says, flush and languid with spent adrenaline. “You know that?” His face falls slightly at the sight of the makeshift ice pack dangling from Finch’s hand.

“Aw, buddy,” he murmurs. “I coulda got that myself.”

Finch rustles the plastic bag between his fingertips.

“No, seriously,” he says as Finch advances across the hotel room. “You don’t hafta…” and then he sucks air sharp between his teeth as Finch clambers onto him and pushes the bag of ice up under his eye.

“Lie back,” Finch tells him. “Your face is blowing up like a balloon.”

Lionel grumbles as he settles back into the pillows, as he accepts Finch’s weight on his legs. “Yeah, well,” he gripes. “Whose fault is that?”

“Mine.”

“Yeah.” Lionel’s face splits into a bright grin. “Yeah, it is. You proud?”

“Perversely, yes. A little bit.” Finch shifts a little, lets himself lie full-length on top of Lionel. “Not at having hurt you, but…”

“Yeah, yeah.” He pats Finch’s back. “What’d I tell you? Scrappy and mean.”

“I prefer ‘pleased at having learned a new skill’, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Lionel says. He catches Finch’s hand in his own. “That too.”

And Finch watches, endorphin-loose and hypnotized, as Lionel brings the hand that struck him to his lips and kisses the knuckles fondly. He holds him there, eyes slipping shut, warm breath tickling across the hair on Finch’s knuckles and Finch is overwhelmed with the desire to push his fingers into Lionel’s mouth. To degrade him in some small, harmless way.

But he waits, lets Lionel stretch out the peaceful moment until his eyes flicker open once more.

He gives Finch’s hand a pulsing squeeze. “You OK?”

“I am.”

“Your back?” he asks.

“Sore,” Finch admits. “But I don’t feel in any danger. How do you feel?”

“I don’t think you broke anything,” he says, straight-faced.

Finch lets the ice pack drop beside the pillow and cups the side of his face barehanded, feels the superficially cool surface and the heat pulsing from beneath. “This won’t bruise, I hope.”

“It might,” Lionel encourages.

Finch sighs, pulls Lionel’s undershirt up to his ribs. His stomach is rounded, lightly dusted with hair, marred with a faded, greenish bruise here, deeper and blacker bruise there, a puckered scar low on his left side, perforating the soft rise of fat at the bottom of his belly. A bullet hole, he knows. The spot on his stomach that Finch struck is slightly red, but it doesn’t seem swollen or particularly hurt.

“Mmmhm.” Lionel twitches slightly beneath him but otherwise holds very still, watching the movement of Finch’s hands curiously.

“How long,” Finch asks, “has it been like this?”

Lionel blinks up at him.

“How long have you been this bruised?”

“Oh. God. I got no clue.” He lets his own hands, rough and nicked, intermingle with Finch’s on his belly. “I guess it got worse around the time I started working for you guys. Don’t take it that way,” he reassures when Finch frowns. “That’s also around the time I started boxing again. I got way the fuck outta shape for a couple of years there. Lotta time on the stand or faking crime scenes, getting soft. You don’t get beat up so much doing that.”

Finch never really understands the way he looks when he speaks about these things. There’s such bitterness to him, such shame, but there’s a smile too. Nostalgia, warm even through the weight of self-hatred, radiates in his eyes, in the set of his mouth.

He supposes Lionel had more friends, then. He supposes he feels a little lonelier now, with only them.

“Anyway,” he says, “This is about right for before I joined HR. Some of the dings are new,” and here he runs his finger over the bullet hole, almost fond, “but it’s not too out of left field for me. Especially when I was a kid. Man, could I take a beating. And a half. So, uh, I guess I’ve always been kind of a punching bag. Don’t worry about it.”

Finch tries to appear unconcerned and does rather a poor job of it, based on the way Lionel’s forehead creases. “Perhaps,” he says, tracing the lines on Fusco’s forehead with one hand, slipping the other up underneath his rucked up shirt, “returning to wrestling would be a safer option.”

“Hah.” His eyes slip shut and he arches back a bit as Finch pinches him. “No, I don’t think so. My flexibility’s for shit. And I’d be too worried about you, wrestling.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. It’s one thing showing you the moves on a punching bag or slowed down. You can’t teach somebody to wrestle without really knocking somebody down. With lots of pins, you gotta twist somebody’s arm, put pressure on their knee or on the back of their neck…I’d be a wreck. Couldn’t do it.”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway,” Lionel says, “I like boxing. I use it. I don’t wrestle my perps too much.”

“I suppose so.” Finch sighs. “It just seems less…painful. Less harsh impact.”

“Oh, there’s…there’s some harsh impact in wrestling. Don’t you worry. You, uh, you wanna try something?”

“Now?”

“Yeah. Just a little thing. Nothing where I’d have to throw you around. I’d show you a takedown or something but we’re not really in the same weight class, so.”

“Very well, then.”

 “Alright.” Lionel sits up with a groan, until he’s nose to nose with Finch in his lap. “Roll over,” he says, nudging at Finch’s shoulder. “So you don’t hafta look at my puffy mug.”

They shift so Finch can occupy the space where Fusco was lying a moment ago and obediently, he rolls face down. The pillow smells like Lionel’s aftershave, his sweat.

Fusco taps the space beside Finch’s head. “Bring your arms up here.”

Awkwardly shifting and rolling his shoulders, he brings them up into position next to his ears.

“Good,” Lionel says. “OK.” And then he settles over Finch. It’s like it always is, in that Lionel is straining to not lean on him too completely, putting all his weight on his elbows as his hands slide under Finch to cup his chest. He nuzzles his hips against Finch’s. “You feel alright?”

“Perfectly fine.” Finch’s voice comes out odd, constricted by the pressure on his diaphragm. “Continue.”

“Alright. So, say I just took you down, and I wanna make sure you stay that way. What I might do, is this.” One hand slides under Finch’s armpit and grabs him by the wrist. “Gotcha by the wrist here.”

“Mmm.” Finch considers the etiquette of pushing himself up against Lionel, if this would be considered a legal move. He will have to ask.

“And with the other arm,” he says as that slides under Finch’s other armpit, as the weight distribution changes and Lionel shifts to his knees, to his opposite forearm, “I’m gonna grab you by the back of your neck – not hard – and then I’ve got your whole upper body kinda trapped. Can I…?”

“Yes. Carefully.”

Lionel’s fingers tickle over the short hairs at the base of his skull as they creep around, as they lightly pin him by the seat of his injury.  “From here,” he continues, “I can pretty much do whatever I want with you. Just pin you for a while or I can pull up a little under your arm here…” and he applies gentle pressure on the back of his neck, and Finch feels a mild, panicked whine in the ball-and-socket of his shoulder “…and that hurts pretty bad if you do it right. _Or_ if we’re in a legal match, I can use that to drag you over on your back and win a couple points. I’m not gonna do that ‘cause…well, you know why. But anyway, that’s a half nelson.” His pinning hand ruffles the back of Finch’s hair and then suddenly he’s released save for the muted pressure of Lionel suspending himself against his back. “You, uh. You want me to rub your back, while I’m here?”

“Thank you,” Finch says. “Perhaps later.” He inclines his head backwards, just slightly, until he feels the warmth of Lionel’s breath, the press of his nose and lips, against his scalp. “You roll over, dear.”

He notes with some satisfaction that Lionel’s cock jerks against the back of his thigh for a short, overeager instant just before he climbs off of Finch.

“You want me to get undressed?” He tugs at the bottom of his undershirt, which slipped down somewhat during the demonstration.

“No. Not yet. Just lie down and be still for a while.”

He obeys, slowly, stretching his legs out against the cheap, scratchy comforter. Finch stands, watches for a while, and wishes for silk sheets.

Finch does not hurry. One thing he is certain of is that Lionel’s most at ease when things happen quickly, solidly, and in known quantities. Anticipation fills him up with curiousity and fear, and that makes him vocal. Oversensitized.

Finch ensures that the task of unlacing his oxfords is a slow and lazy one. That he hangs his sweater, his collared shirt, and his trousers on the skeletal in the hotel closet, so that when Whistler returns to campus in a few hours for his once-weekly night class, he will not be too terribly rumpled. He spends a nervous moment on his phone, silently pleading that Reese will meet his scheduled appointment with his police-appointed psychologist, that Miss Shaw will choose to keep to herself for a few hours, that wherever Root is, she doesn’t need him. That he won’t have to abruptly call this off.

Sameen wants to know when he’s coming to pick up Bear. She has work to do tonight and she can’t bring the dog, she says. Work, most likely in quotation marks. Finch appreciates the income that Shaw’s extracurriculars bring in, but he thinks that making one’s cover identity a prolific criminal may cause more problems than it solves. And he’d know.

All the same, he doesn’t want to see Bear wrapped up in such things. He texts Shaw with a suggested time and place to meet. She agrees. Lionel groans, “Are you _texting_?” from his position on the bed and Finch shushes him, gently, and silences his phone.

From a pocket of his gym bag, he retrieves a soft, silk pouch.

Lionel jumps when Finch sits beside him on the bed. Quickly, obediently, he settles again. He allows himself a sidelong peek over the round of his bicep at Finch. “What’re we doing, boss?”

Finch empties the pouch into his hand, flips the cap open on the lubricant.

Almost unconsciously, Lionel pushes his legs apart by a few degrees.

This sort of thing used to take a lot of effort on Finch’s part, a great deal of coaxing. Because of his pride. Because Lionel came complete with a set of bone-deep, ground-in ideas about what lying down for someone else means, and those ideas took a long time to wear away. Because Finch was the first one to touch him nicely.

 _The first one_ , he thinks again with a kind of too-certain ferocity as he tugs Lionel’s briefs down and his hips lift, eager, under Finch’s hand. Finch pushes slick fingers into him, stretches and soothes, and Lionel gasps into his folded arms, rocks lazily back into Finch’s hand. Well-trained. He could tease him like this, slow and tender, for hours and Lionel would simply acquiesce. And Finch might do that, if he thought he had that sort of time at his disposal. He doesn’t, of course. But Finch believes it’s important that they both at least half-believe that this could go on all day, that Finch has all the time in the world.

He wishes rather desperately that he did. Or even that he didn’t have to manage Whistler’s life along with all the others, that he wasn’t chained to this identity, showing up to class and the apartment and the market five blocks away and other small, dingy Whistler places. He had more time, before. They could take the day, every so often.

Now they’re stealing hours, minutes together. If Finch had a day off from Whistler, he doesn’t know if he’d have the wherewithal to put it to good use. He might start living Whistler’s weekends too: a glass of wine, a crossword puzzle, a walk in the park with the service dog who doesn’t quite fit the owner.

Not that it sounds so bad, but he’s lonesome as it is.

Lionel exhales, slow and shivery, ending in a muted cry when Finch rolls his fingers inside him. He’s languid now, quiet. Finch has noticed this about him, that right after the boxing his blood flows quick and his eyes are bright and his skin hums with adrenaline, but soon after there’s a laxness and a peace to him that Finch likes. Though Finch thinks he wants to catch him in the first stage too, at least once, and that’s why the shower at the gym is still a rogue possibility in his mind, even after the novelty has worn off. Finch curls his fingers, deliberately too-hard, and Lionel whines, harsh and plaintive, and his hips buckle and twitch. He recovers easily, falls into a smooth rhythm of rocking back and up into Finch’s hand, just far enough and hard enough that the sensation might be painful and too much before he’s moving away.

Finch puts a hand on one of Lionel’s hips to hold him, to guide him back.

“We gonna…?” Lionel half-asks, trying to contain his eagerness.

He tries very hard to be patient. Finch squeezes his hip gently. “Almost,” he whispers. “Just a…”

“OK,” Lionel interrupts, as if to apologize for asking. “Whenever. ‘S OK.”

And he shouldn’t be sorry, Finch thinks. It’s his fault for deliberately constructing a need in Lionel that he’s often unable to fill. If he’d just left well enough alone, Lionel wouldn’t need to be impatient any more than Finch wants him to be.

Finch does like him to be at least a _little impatient_ , sometimes.

He slides his hand down over the soft rise of Lionel’s hip, palms his cock where it’s trapped by the front of his briefs. Lionel hasn’t mentioned this, hasn’t requested they be pulled down. He just assumes that these things are intentional, that Finch meant for them to be that way, so he rides it out. Finch supposes he did mean to do this, at least in part. The idea appeals. But until his fingertips brushed over him, straining through cotton, he’d mostly forgotten.  He curls fingers around him, slides his thumb heavy over the wet spot forming at the tip.

The sound Lionel makes is guttural, wanting, and he rolls his hips, slow, controlled, experimental. He’s waiting to see if he’s allowed.

Finch chases that movement, curls the fingers of his other hand tight and that guttural sound goes sharp and high. Lionel clamps down on the sound, on Finch’s fingers. The back of his neck is bright red as he pants for a moment, embarrassed.

“Whenever you’re ready, man,” he murmurs. His shoulders shiver.

Finch is already sliding his fingers out, already tugging at his own underwear. Squeezing more lubricant on his palm and stroking it over himself, thorough, thorough, even though he has to chase things like this as fast as he can, Finch can’t let himself cut corners. When he pushes into Lionel, it’s slick and easy, like it should be, and Lionel only sighs, only pushes back so their hips are flush.

Finch chews at his lower lip, traces his fingers over Lionel’s broad back with its shivering, waiting muscles, trying to distract himself. He traces the shape of muscles hidden underneath, of the big bones of his shoulders. His skin is soft. He runs hot.

Finch lets himself drop forward gingerly, until his body is draped along the length of Lionel’s spine. He breathes deep at the nape of his neck, lets his teeth scrape his skin, the soft sides of his throat. He smells warm, alive.

“You OK, buddy?” Lionel shifts a little, under him. Finch can feel his voice reverberating through his beautiful back.

 _OK_. Finch chuckles to himself, a harsh little hiss of a laugh. _Are you OK?,_ meaning _Can you do this?_ He nips at Lionel’s neck, harder than he might ordinarily, and Lionel gasps, wriggles back against Finch. Finch presses into him, sucks and nibbles hard at his neck, hard enough that a bruise might be visible above Lionel’s shirt collars like a dark sun rolling over the horizon and someone might say something and Lionel will have to make an excuse, sweating while everyone knows he belongs to someone.

 _Can you do this?_ , meaning _Can you not even figure out how to fuck me in the ass without breaking a hip, you crippled old man?_ And oh, oh it infuriates Finch and his hips snap forward, savagely, seemingly on their own.

And he knows, Finch reflects as he begins to pound into Lionel in earnest, it’s not what Lionel means to say to him, not ever. It’s all care when Lionel says these things, all earnestness and willingness to adapt, to roll over, to support.

It’s only what Finch hears. Somewhere between his ears’ reception of the sound and his brain’s interpretation of it, it changes, decays and becomes feed for some painful, hideous inadequacy blossoming deep in his chest and it’s this that makes Finch pinch and claw at Lionel’s chest and sink his teeth into the scruff of Lionel’s neck like a beast.

Lionel keens, bucks up into him, and Finch lets his jaw uncoil from its spring-trap tightness, lets his tongue run soothingly over soft, raw indents in his skin. Poor dear.

Lionel tilts his head back and for a moment the two of them brush cheek to cheek while Finch keeps pace.

There’s a twinge in his hip. He ignores it. He leans harder on Lionel’s back and commences a gentler study of Lionel’s nipples, of the way he squirms when they’re pinched and pulled and twisted. If he does it one-handed, uses the other hand to skim too-gentle fingers over Lionel’s trapped cock, he can feel the way it twitches, gamely, with every tweak. There’s an appeal to that, Finch thinks. Maybe someday…

Lionel whimpers, rolling his hips in small, fitful circles, grinding up into him, and Finch wants to trap that desperation beneath him, let it play out nice and slow. Without really thinking, he slips his hands under Lionel’s armpits. He grips his wrist in one hand, he lets the other fall heavy on the back of Lionel’s neck.

Immediately, Lionel goes still.

“This is…” Finch pants, testing how much he can lean on Lionel’s neck, how firmly he can pin him. “This is fine?”

Lionel can’t quite nod, but Finch can feel the twitch of him, of his tentative, breathless acquiescence.

Finch rolls his hips slow and deep, feels the gorgeous, tense heat of him flex around his cock. With his upper body pinned, Lionel can’t help but hold very still, very polite as Finch’s thrusts dial back and change angles so they’re brushing, lazily, over and over again across the same spot inside him, except for a series of desperate, broken thrusts into nothing.

Finch’s mouth is dry. He swallows, licks his lips. “Can you…?” he asks. “Or will you need my hands?”

“Shit.” There’s a hoarse quaver in his voice, laughter or surprise. If Finch lifts his head a little, lifts his eyes from oddly arresting sight of his fingers pinching the nape of Lionel’s neck, he can see that Lionel’s cheek is drawn back, tight, in a manic smile. “Shit,” he whispers, “I can try.”

___

 

“Thanks for that.” Lionel is sprawled on his back beside Finch. He has his arms slipped under the pillow behind his head, wrapping it around his ears and cheeks, guarding his face. Finch can hear him, though, smiling.

Finch asks, “For what?”

“The half nelson,” he says. “That was real sweet of you.”

“That _is_ why you taught it to me, isn’t it? So I would use it. On you.”

Lionel chuckles nervously. “I dunno about that. Maybe.” He shifts in bed, rolls to look at him. The smile’s still there, warm and unashamed. “I guess I hoped, if you were real nice to me…” He lets one hand drift lazily across the sheet to brush Finch’s soft upper arm with his knuckles. A mock punch. “You’re real nice to me.”

“Well, you’re very welcome,” Finch says. Something about Lionel’s grin is infecting him, making him feel tender and weak. “I had a nice time too.”

“Good. ‘M happy to hear that.” Lionel creeps four ticklish fingers over Finch’s bicep and rests that way for a moment. His eyes are burning adoring holes in Finch and he has to look away at the ceiling, his face hot. “I mean that, you know. I know this stuff isn’t…isn’t your favorite and, uh, you’ve been real nice about it.”

“Not _so_ nice.”

A surprised laugh. “Yeah?”

Finch shrugs against the sheets. “I freely admit that I’m coming to enjoy our lessons. They’re long overdue and I enjoy the exercise. Not to mention, I’m finding you to be a skilled, patient instructor.”

“Shut up,” he murmurs, delighted, into the pillow.

“And while the rest is not precisely my cup of tea, it might be…adjacent to my cup of tea.” Finch covers Fusco’s hand with his own. “There are aspects of this that I’m beginning to see the appeal of. Or at least, I think I can imagine the appeal.” He pats Lionel’s trembling knuckles. “Or I can try.”

Lionel sits up in bed, gathers the pillow and his half of the blankets, and very deliberately moves closer. He settles near enough that their shoulders brush, but not so near that Finch can’t move if he needs to, can’t rearrange his aching limbs. He exhales once, deep and long.

Finch watches him for a while in the dark, his eyelashes spikey, his eyes wet and reflecting the curve of some blue-white light from somewhere, a glowing sign, a light in the street. Sometimes he blinks and the light is suddenly muted. “May I…?” Finch begins. “I’m sorry, it’s tiresome and there’s no need to answer, but may I ask why?”

Lionel takes his deep, peaceful breath again, in – hold – out with a little whistle in the tail. “Why what?” he says, eventually.

 _You know exactly why what,_ Finch thinks, _and I think it’s very unfair of you to play dumb just now. I’m being vulnerable._ He stays silent for a while, not quite thinking, just lying there, verbally constipated, trying not to ask the question in the obvious way, the insensitive way.

“When you’re a kid,” Lionel begins, suddenly, making Finch start, “and you don’t know what you want exactly – you know you’re a bit different and you know you don’t want anybody to find out you’re a bit different ‘cause they’d rip you apart, if they found out – you come up with weird ways to…to deal with stuff. Figure stuff out. Other guys, they were real shits to the girls they liked. They’d spit on her just so she’d look at ‘em, so she’d say their names while she cussed ‘em out. And I, um, I got in fights. ‘Cause I couldn’t do anything else.”

Finch tries very hard to keep his breathing even, to not make a single, pitying sound.

“I mean, I got in fights anyway.” He breathes, sharp and wry, a voiceless laugh. “Short little fat kid, I could’ve had a bullseye painted on me and got my ass kicked less. But sometimes, you know, if I…I mean. If I liked somebody.” He shrugs. “I got real funny but real sarcastic. Makes people want to shut you up. Even your friends might slug you, sometimes, if you get mouthy enough. Better than nothing, you know?”

Finch doesn’t know. Finch has this terrible urge to roll on top of him, to kiss all his bruises and shush him and tell him over and over that those days are gone. He doesn’t. He knows that it would be the wrong thing, right now.

“I’m not a shrink or anything,” Lionel says, “but I know that when two things come together a lot, they get all tangled up in your brain. One makes you think of the other, that kinda thing. Pavlov’s dog. You get it.” He falls silent and squirms a little, like he’s torturing himself with how quiet Finch is and Finch doesn’t know what to say, hopes it’s better if he doesn’t speak.

“So, I guess that’s why. Again, not a shrink, but it…checks out, I think.” He lets out an odd, shivery breath. “Don’t think I ever told anybody that stuff before.” He sounds surprised, cautiously optimistic.

Wordlessly, Finch clutches his hand.

Lionel rolls, puts his face close to Finch’s, brow to brow. “Sorry,” he says, “that was too much.”

“No.” Finch leans in, presses their heads tight together. “You explained it very well. And I did ask. Thank you.”

“Alright. Well. You’re welcome.” He sighs sleepily, brushes their feet together beneath the covers. “I don’t want you thinking,” he adds suddenly, “that I didn’t like the other stuff or anything. Like I was toughing my way through everything else the past few years, waiting for you to slug me. It wasn’t like that.”

“I never thought so,” Finch tells him, suddenly wracked by new anxieties.

“It’s just what I’m used to,” he says. “But it’s exciting too. Brings all the old stuff back.”

Finch nods, slowly. _Old stuff,_ he thinks. _Old friends too, most likely._

There must be a change in his heart rate, a tightening in his throat. Perhaps he makes a noise, sharp and distressed, but if he does, he can’t remember. Whatever it is, Lionel picks up on it. He nuzzles up against Finch, pets his cheek with the back of his hand. “But it’s safe,” he says, “when you do it.”

He says, “I never had to ask anybody before.”

Finch shudders. Icy water trickles under them, running from the melting, leaking ice pack in snaking rivulets along the stitching of the mattress.


End file.
